Cognitive impairment is recognized as a major issue in a wide range of populations varying from ones where cognitive deficits are the major disease hallmark through normal aging. From children through the elderly, cognitive deficits can significantly impact quality of life. A number of pharmacological, medical device, and behavioral therapy approaches have been developed to target cognition in disease and healthy populations.
Cognitive training has emerged as a particularly promising approach toward improving cognition or preventing cognitive decline. Cognitive training methods have the benefits of being non-invasive, deliverable in multiple formats, and applicable across a range of participant demographics. Additionally, emerging evidence suggest that very specific cognitive training paradigms can have robust cognitive improvements in specific patient populations (Anguera J A et al., 2013 Nature, 501: 97-101). However, the general applicability of cognitive training approaches has been limited by the technical problem of low efficiency (essentially, time spent engaging in a training regimen is not actually cognitively challenging to the individual during the whole cognitive training regimen). It is recognized that cognitive training may be challenging to an individual in order for neural plasticity and cognitive improvements to occur. However, with current limitations in training protocols, some cases of cognitive training regimens may become so inefficient that an individual may spend large blocks of time executing a training protocol at a difficulty well above or well below what is suited to his/her abilities.